The Monkey's Wedding
and Other Stories
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Praise for Joan Aiken:
"Joan Aiken's invention seemed inexhaustible, her high spirits a blessing, her sheer storytelling zest a phenomenon. She was a literary treasure, and her books will continue to delight for many years to come."—Philip Pullman
"Aiken writes with the genius of a born storyteller, with mother wit expanded and embellished by civilized learning, and with the brilliance of an avenging angel."—The New Yorker
Joan Aiken's stories captivated readers for fifty years. They're funny, smart, gentle, and occasionally very, very scary. The stories in The Monkey's Wedding are collected here for the very first time and include six never before published, as well as two previously published under the pseudonym Nicholas Dee. Here you'll find the story of a village for sale . . . or is the village itself the story? There's an English vicar who declares on his deathbed that he might have lived an entirely different life. After his death, a large, black, argumentative cat makes an appearance. . . . This hugely imaginative collection includes introductions by Aiken as well as by her daughter, Lizza Aiken.
Best known for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken (1924-2004) wrote over a hundred books and won the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards. After her first husband's death, she supported her family by copyediting at Argosy magazine and an advertising agency before turning to fiction. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Argosy, Women's Own, and many others. Visit her online at: www.joanaiken.com.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Focusing largely on prolific British fictionist Aiken's early works from the late 1950s and early 1960s, this imaginative posthumous collection includes among others six never before published short stories and two originally published under a pseudonym. "Honeymaroon" chronicles the adventures of a castaway typist who lands on an island inhabited by sentient mice; "Girl in a Whirl" features a motorcycle-riding, man-hating, daredevil albinoess; "Octopi in the Sky" follows a man haunted by images of cephalopods; and in "A Mermaid Too Many," a sailor's exotic present for his lover a mermaid in a bottle has unforeseen consequences. The charm and unrestrained quality of Aiken's early stories are put into stark perspective by an essay from her daughter Lizza, who offers up glimpses into a particularly difficult period in her mother's life: Shortly after the end of WWII, widowed and homeless with two young children, Aiken made the bold decision to support herself and her family by writing. Wildly inventive, darkly lyrical, and always surprising, this collection like the mermaid in a bottle is a literary treasure that should be cherished by fantastical fiction fans of all ages.
